Being Human (US Version) 101 There Goes the Neighborhood I Review

Today I’m going to take a look at the new SyFy show Being Human. Once again this is semi-live blogging meaning I’m watching it live and doing this blog – yet I’m doing it off of a prerecorded thing – hey, I’ve had only a little sleep and it makes sense to me. Before I start I want to say a few things. This isn’t an original series, it’s the American version of a UK show that has been around for a while – and honestly I’ve wanted to watch the original British incarnation for a while I just haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. The premise of the show kind of strikes me as Three’s Company meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s simple: a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire live together and try to exist in the normal world.

I’m going to try to have an open mind about this but I know it will have two major drawbacks for me. The first being the most obvious; they can show/do/say much more in the UK version than they can on SyFy and I’m more than a little worried about how that translates. Are they going to find a seamless way to work around it, or will this end up being like when a basic cable network tries to air a show like The Sopranos on their network and end up having to edit out so much it’s basically a thirty minute show?  My other problem is with the casting Meghan Rath plays Sally and I’ll be more than willing to give her a chance after all she was one of the best things to have come out of the short lived series The Assistants (Brittney Irvin was also good but she’ll always be Courtney Whitmore/Stargirl to me); Sam Huntington plays Josh and I’m willing to give him a chance too, I like the things I’ve seen him in and I’ve been meaning to watch Fanboys for a while now. Mark Pellegrino plays Bishop and I think he’s going to play a pretty big part in the series so I’m glad I like him from his work on Supernatural – he played Jacob in Lost too but I had pulled away from the series before he was really in it. My biggest, and I guess only problem with the casting is Sam Witwer. I’m sure he’s a nice guy but his stint on Smallville as Davis Bloome/Doomsday made me absolutely detest the man. Seriously, I dislike him about a thousand times more than Kristen Kreuk and words cannot express how I feel about that woman.

Alright, now it’s time for the show.

Well I’m a little into it and so far the most disturbing this has been seeing Josh all bloody and wearing a dress. That was just disturbing. Also I don’t now if this is just me or not but every time the camera focuses on Aidan Sam is making that annoying duck face thing with his mouth that you always see on everyone’s myspace profile picture. It’s kind of annoying.

When Aidan and Marcus are arguing I find it really hard to believe that no one on that floor in the hospital managed to hear the crash from when Aidan was thrown up against the wall. I mean if you hit the wall hard enough for parts of it to fall off I’m sure someone would come running – especially in a hospital when it would be easy to assume that it was the sound of a patient falling on the ground.

I actually like how Josh and Aidan play off of each other so at least it makes at least half of the scenes with Sam in it easier for me to watch. Anyway I really wish that they would have done a little bit more to show how they met up, how Josh became a werewolf, how the two of them learned their secrets. I mean I know that they can’t show the creation of every connection the characters have but Sally had more of an introduction. Speaking of Sally I like that she’s pretty much a sarcastic jackass. I did find two things really funny so far: 1^st Aidan and his bad credit, and 2^nd the fact that when Josh sees Sally for the first time his instinct is to grab a slotted spoon – he lives with a vampire and is a werewolf yet he grabs a spoon? Yeah I’m really digging Sally and Josh’s freak out over it the two of them have pretty fantastic chemistry. And we have yet another character that makes Aidan passable. Well.. I knew PBS had to be good for something.

I get that they need to establish all this internal turmoil and make Aidan this big tragic hero type person but is it really necessary to flashback to events that happened in the first episode not even 20 minutes ago? And we have yet more duck face – I think I should make a drinking game out of it. So Bishop is a cop – so I take it between vampires working as cops and Aidan working at the hospital that this has the potential to turn into one of those conspiracy shows where this evil supernatural race no one knew exists is actually behind the scenes in everything running the show. If they do it correctly it could be interesting.

I don’t know if I like Josh’s sister, I think I need to see more of where her storyline goes in order for me to know for sure what to think about her. I’m glad we saw some flashbacks to Aidan and Bishop feeding on that wedding party it gives away a nice piece of the backstory here but leaves a lot open to interpretation. Is the reason Aidan plays nice now because he fed off of that kid, did he see Bishop feed from that kid – what happened there.

Things ended with a pretty good cliffhanger. Aidan at some bar feeding off of a willing girl, Josh locked in the basement with his sister about to transform and possibly kill or eat her. And Sally desperately trying to leave the house to reach Josh to save them both. It was a pretty good episode, it could have benefited more from a two hour premiere but there aren’t any more real complaints. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. My only fear now is that I’ve started out with the US version that whenever I do get around to having enough time to watch the original UK version that it will feel like that’s the rip off  instead of the other way around.

Before I leave I felt this wouldn't be a proper review unless I present to you.... vampire duck face!

Rating: A

Doctor Who 6.00 A Christmas Carol Review

 Live blogging - Doctor Who 2010 Christmas Special: “A Christmas Carol”

 

Alright this was something I’ve been really looking forward to for a long time now. I was so surprised by this past series of Doctor Who was really good. I wasn’t expecting much going into it – I still hadn’t gotten over the loss of Rose, and it gets painful that they brought her back in series 3 and 4 and David had left so I wasn’t looking forward to this new series. That being said I was really surprised, I love the new Doctor, and Amy is fantastic and poor Rory – you know I must like him, he’s been killed off like 3 times already. I’ve always liked the Christmas specials and they do seem to get better with each passing one so I go into this with the hope that this will by far be the best one yet.

I’m glad that they included Rory in this, now that he and Amy are married it will make for an interesting dynamic to have the Doctor with two regular companions (watch now that I type this Rory will get killed off for good with 6x01.) I’m not going to lie, it was pretty damn funny to see the ship going down and Amy comes running out in her policeman’s costume and then a few seconds later Rory runs out dressed up in his Roman gear – that’s.. umm.. adventurous to put It politely.

 

Doctor Who’s take on A Christmas Carol is interesting mostly because it is futuristic and ‘classic’ at the same time. I do like the twist of the ‘Scrooge’ type character keeping people frozen in ice until their families can pay off their debts to him. The Doctor falling down the chimney was funny, this particular incarnation is rather fanboy-ish when it comes to things so I can’t help but think that it would have been more interesting to see him up on the roof instead of explaining what he was doing up there before he fell.

 

The bit where Amy is on the phone trying to keep the Doctor from being distracted from the flying fish was funny but it would have been better if they didn’t say ‘fish’ practically every other word. It doesn’t help that in the very next scene they keep saying fish no less than 10 times, but at least we get a quick explanation as to why Kazran didn’t hit the child but at the same time you could pretty much see it coming. Although I honestly didn’t expect to see the Doctor travel back to Kazran’s childhood and talk to theolder version of Kazran. I was a little let down by the scenes where the Doctor is in the past with the child version of Kazran, it seemed to move a little too slowly before the giant shark showed up.

 

I do hate to say it but I think it would have been far more entertaining if Amy, Rory or even River (who hasn’t been in the special – yet oddly enough was in the commercial bumper with Matt and Amy wishing everyone a Happy Holiday.) It’s not that Matt and the boy didn’t play well off of each other it just felt like the scene needed more. Someone to really question what was going on. Okay – really, I need to create a drinking game for every time someone says a variation of the word ‘fish.’

The thing that I’m having the most trouble with here is when the scenes cut to the older Kazran and he’s watching these events on the projection in his room but he’s freaking out. I know that the rules need to be a little lax when it comes to time travel stories, but you would think that if the older version of Kazran is watching his younger self it should be pretty safe to assume that he didn’t die as a child. It’s also a little annoying that halfway into the special they introduce a new character – it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if they hadn’t shown Amy and Rory before. What was the point of even including them if they’re only in one-two scenes and the focus is on the one shot characters?

Hah the Fez is back! I wonder what the countdown is for? Is it the amount of times Abigail’s pod can be opened? Is it a countdown to an army of giant sharks that will come and destroy everything? Is it the amount of times that Abigail has to interact with Kazran before he can fully change? I like the idea of the Doctor going back on Christmas every year to visit Kazran and to let Abigail out of her pod and they all spend one day together, but it is a little bit annoying when you consider the fact that it seems like the Doctor has forgotten that Amy, Rory and everyone else aboard the ship are all falling to their deaths. I know that back in the ‘current’ time only a few seconds have passed but it is a little annoying.

Well of course it stands to reason that as soon as I complain about that up pops Amy as ‘the Ghost of Christmas Present.’ Hmm… so it turns out that the countdown on Abigail’s pod was a countdown of how many days she had left to live – I guess I was sort of right considering that is also the amount of times the pod could be opened. The big revelation that Kazran has become his father isn’t really surprising – it’s pretty obvious that is where they were going with the story. One thing I wasn’t too clear on was if the Doctor got his screwdriver back, did he leave the half with Kazran and Abigail, did he go back and get the two halves and join them together?

The trailer for series six.. oh man… lots of Amy, Rory and River. What’s going to happen now after series five? What will the repercussions of that be, are we really done with the whole Silence thing, or the Pandorica? The Ood are back, will we see any huge event big enough to bring back other characters? And the thing that I’m really interested in… what were all those countdown marks on River and Amy? How did they get there, why are they there, what are they there for, what do they mean? Oh man, the new series cannot come fast enough for me.

Rating: A+ (was there ever any doubt?)